Principal Automation Engineer I

Organization Description

Process Research and Development invents processes and prepares the active pharmaceutical ingredient to enable clinical trials, toxicology studies and drug product development for AbbVie’s pre-clinical and clinical drug pipeline. We create valuable intellectual property through composition of matter, processes and technologies resulting in cost effective commercial manufacturing processes.

The scientists and engineers within AbbVie's Process R&D organization work in multi-functional teams to develop scalable processes and enable clinical supplies for safety testing, clinical trials, and formulation development. Early in development, scientists focus on ensuring the process can be run safely, identifying and addressing major scale-up issues and developing the final process. Later in development, engineers optimize the process and lead manufacturing campaigns. In the final stage of development, engineers transfer the optimized process to commercial manufacturing and support Process Validation. Throughout the development lifecycle, lab automation, data analysis and data management play a significant role in gaining organizational efficiency and generating scientific insights.  

Job Description

The Principal Automation Engineer I will play a key role in the Flow and Automation Strategy Team (FAST), a broader CMC and Biological Sciences automation and digitization initiative at AbbVie as we continue our transformation towards Pharma 4.0. The vision of the automation team is to transform the culture and the way we do research to enhance safety, access new enabling capabilities, and gain efficiency in development of life-changing medicines with high-quality data through a deliberate and sustainable automation competency. The tools generated by this role will be instrumental in developing end-to-end automated solutions and data analytics to lab scientists, allowing them to reduce risk and make faster decisions that directly impact drug pipeline development.

We are seeking a talented and experienced Automation Engineer who will lead the team responsible to drive vision of FAST and develop robotics and automated solutions across various CMC and Biological Sciences functions at global level. This role is expected to leverage business acumen, leadership experience, technical skills, and influence over authority, to promote alignment and deliver results, introduce new technologies and processes, and enable deployment at increased scale and productivity.  This individual will mobilize and encourage diverse and talented teams of scientists, deploying newly developed robotics systems like workstations, and autonomous robots into AbbVie laboratories. Ideal candidates should possess a BS/MS/PhD degree in a discipline with a strong background on hardware integration and software programming components and/or have developed the requisite experience in previous roles.

Responsibilities:

• Serve as a lead automation engineer and drive the mission of FAST across AbbVie. Act as a mentor to help grow technical expertise of the cross functional team.
• Partner with Process and Biological Sciences technical staff to understand business challenges and effectively guide toward sustainable solutions.
• Partner with Development Sciences Digital Transformation team to develop and deploy scalable and maintainable solutions.
• Proactively seek opportunities to develop innovative solutions to address challenging business problems through creative application of automation and data solutions.
• Build robust and sustainable automated end-to-end solutions for various workflows, e.g., from instrument measurement to a data warehouse.
• Work cross-functionally to build automation solutions that will require diverse development skills, such as controls engineering, back-end data management strategies, DB knowledge.
• Apply an operational excellence mindset to help identify, devise, and recommend new opportunities to optimize current processes

Basic:

• BS degree in Robotics, Mechanical, Electrical, System Engineering or equivalent.
• BS or related discipline with 14+ years of relevant experience; MS degree in related discipline with 12+ years of relevant experience, PhD in related discipline with 6+ years of relevant experience. The final determination on the title and grade level will be based on the experience of the candidate.
• Experience leading technical projects simultaneously in robotics engineering or other large-scale technical implementations
• Proven experience bringing new automation equipment and processes on-line, from initial startup to reaching targeted metrics such as rate, yield, deployment time, etc.
• Delivered projects into environments such as R&D labs, manufacturing, etc.
• Experience with various programming languages, such as Python, Visual Basic, C, C#, C++, etc.
• Proficiency using business/project management software like MS Excel, MS Word, MS Project, etc.
• Proven written and verbal communication skills and ability to succinctly summarize key findings.

Key Competencies:

• Partners with R&D scientific & technical staff to understand business challenges and effectively guide toward sustainable solutions.
• Develop group vision and objectives in collaboration with key stakeholders to support team strategies and goals.
• Act as a strong team player in a cross functional collaborative environment thriving for world class excellence.
• Learns fast, grasps the "essence" and can change course quickly where indicated.
• Raises the bar and is never satisfied with the status quo.
• Creates a learning environment, open to suggestions and experimentation for improvement.
• Ability to manage people and lead teams and projects to deliver a common set of objectives.
• Embraces the ideas of others, nurtures innovation and manages innovation to reality.
• Demonstrate excellent communication skills and specifically
  • Illustrate strong oral and written technical communications
  • Seamlessly present automation solutions to multifunctional teams
  • Educate and train colleagues on various tools and techniques